Reflections in a Mexican Mirror

I belong to a small group of artists who call themselves South Pasco Artworks, or “SouthPaw” for short. I have made some wonderful friends in that group. We were invited to put on a show at a Tampa Restaurant called Viva La Frieda, a very good, but kind of funky, Mexican eatery that features works of Tampa Bay artists. Our show is opening on September 16th, 2005, in honor of Mexican Independence day. I had many months to think about what to do about this show and so I started by going onto the Internet and looking up Mexican Independence. I couldn’t get terribly enthused about painting something to commemorate the overthrow of the Spanish Rule in Mexico but I started dwelling on it, and pretty soon images of Frieda Kahlo started coming into my head, and I found out that the national flower of Mexico is the Dahlia, one of my most favorite flowers, that doesn’t grow well here for me. Talavera pottery is one of the most interesting painted pottery produced in Mexico and so I started looking for a Talavera pot that could contain my Dahlias. Of course the vases were all way beyond the sparse budget and so I decided to paint my own Talavera vase, using model car paint I found in the toy section of Wal-Mart. When you are poor you get very resourceful. The vase was from China and is all white and I only had to paint one side of it! But you get the idea. I used quite a few images of Talavera and what you see is unique to me as it is not a copy of a Talavera but an amalgamation of many of them. My obsession started to mount, and I was annoyed at how much time and energy, and money, I was spending on what I suspect will never sell, but if you are creative, and obsessed, those things matter little. I plunged on with this project that was now fairly uncontrollable, looking for silk Dahlias, white vases I could make into fake Talavera. It was getting too much. But the image of Frieda reflected in the mirror wouldn’t leave me so I had to do it. In the end my painting may not be about Mexican Independence, but I am not sure exactly what it is about, so I’ll leave the interpretation to you! Frieda was obsessed with her own image. As a painter I am not terribly interested in my own image, but I had to put part of it in that mirror! Paintings sometimes have meanings that don’t translate into words very well, and this is one of them, I think.

MIDI Sequence by A. Bricio-Hernandez from The Classical Archives www.classicalarchives.com

Heitor Villa-Lobos Etude No. 1 for Guitar (1928) (permission pending)

Portraits • Landscapes • Symbolic Still Life • Still Life • Monotype • Watercolor • Egg Tempera •

Feeling Series • Student’s Gallery • Drawing • Giclee Prints • Digital Reproduction • Purchase Paintings

Portraits • Landscapes • Symbolic Still Life • Still Life • Monotype • Watercolor • Egg Tempera •

Feeling Series • Student’s Gallery • Drawing • Giclee Prints • Digital Reproduction • Purchase Paintings